The Westervelt family are Hollanders, and although the statement that they may have descended from "that little Dutch garden, commonly called Eden," may not be well proven, still they were known in the Netherlands at a period when surnames were coming into general usage. A genealogical authority states on this point that there is only one class of cases in which it is possible to trace a name beyond the eleventh century -- these cases being families that had established funds for the deliverance of the souls of certain ancestors from purgatory. Family names prior to that time were entirely unknown, and it was some two hundred years before surnames were generally in use. The mothers of the family have frequently been of French, English, Scotch or German extraction, and their progeny, a commingling of blood from these the foremost nations of Europe, should have developed a type of humanity which is best represented in the American.
However, it is only with a feeling of respect that we should regard the Dutch as our ancestors; a people who, as a nation of the present day, take a position of lesser importance, ranked among the first when most of our ancestors came to this newly colonized locality. Amsterdam was then among the foremost cities of the world in commercial import, and the prestige which the Low Countries had acquired as masters of the sea had not departed. Holland, so often held in slight esteem, is entitled to the highest. To her we are indebted for a large share of the principles which have contributed to make us the great nation that we are to-day. Even the New Englander is proud to admit that his forefathers went first to Holland to learn what true liberty was ere they came here to practise freedom, and any forgetfulness on our part for the motherland would savor of baseness and ingratitude.
These Gleanings have been brought together during the few leisure moments of a most busy life, from a variety of sources -- colonial and later records have been searched, church registers,